Manitoban to run the MMIW national inquiry

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This article was published 06/10/2017 (2980 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

OTTAWA — The embattled National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls has replaced its top manager with a Manitoban.

In a news release late Friday, chief commissioner Marion Buller announced Debbie Reid would become executive director, hailing her as a “strong Indigenous woman with an excellent track record.”

Reid comes from Skownan First Nation (280 kilometres north of Winnipeg), and has worked within the community, the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs and as special advisor to former national chief Phil Fontaine when he led the Assembly of First Nations.

Reid spent a decade in the federal public service, including the Health Canada branch that administers on-reserve nursing stations, as well as the Privy Council Office, which is the prime minister’s bureaucracy.

Commissioners have blamed the PCO for stymieing the inquiry’s progress. The inquiry has faced banal delays over getting proper computer equipment and using expense forms, as well as profound confusion over how deeply it can probe police work.

The original executive director resigned July 21, citing “personal reasons,” though it came just days after one of the five commissioners, Marilyn Poitras, had stepped down.

Poitras, the sole Métis and Prairie commissioner, blamed a “colonial-style” process she believed would produce yet another set of recommendations that would gather dust. Three other inquiry staff left a month prior.

dylan.robertson@freepress.mb.ca